Gigabyte gives GeForce GTX 680 a Windforce 5X cooler

Gigabyte's WindForce 3X cooler is a safe bet for any high-end graphics card, but like a Gillette razor, you always wonder if there's a limit to the add-more-blades philosophy.

Five blades is the current standard for a top-of-the-line close shave, and Gigabyte's hoping to follow in similar footsteps with the soon-to-be-unleashed GeForce GTX 680 Super Overclock.

This monster card has been on show during Gigabyte's 2012 Tech Tour in Taiwan and is the first to feature a WindForce 5X cooler.

It's still very much at the prototype stage, but Gigabyte's concept includes a vapour chamber, a large block of aluminium fins, a scattering of thick copper heatpipes and five 40mm fans lined up along the card's top edge.

The GeForce GTX 680 doesn't run overly hot, so this could be a case of over-engineering, but who knows, perhaps Gigabyte has the card overclocked to new heights. As it stands there's no mention of either core or memory frequencies, but we do know the cooler occupies three expansion slots, so quad-SLI configurations are going to be a bit of a challenge.

We're worried about the noise those little fans are bound to make, but more importantly, we're still trying to find out if there's a sixth blade on the rear for precision trimming.